Scandal case closed: Alcatel

The global boss of French telecommunications giant Alcatel-Lucent, Ben Verwaayen, has joined NBN Co chief
Mike Quigley
in saying the Costa Rican bribery scandal that threatened to derail progress on the $36.9 billion local project earlier this year is over and will cause no further controversy.

A flood of headlines emerged in June when news broke that Mr Quigley oversaw the American operations at Alcatel-Lucent at a time that some of its executives paid bribes to board members of Costa Rican telco Instituto Constarricense de Electricidad (ICE).

ICE unsuccessfully sought damages from Alcatel after the French company was fined $US137 million by the US Department of Justice and US Securities and Exchange Commission and it was reported Mr Quigley would be forced to appear as a witness.

Mr Verwaayen said Alcatel had settled the case and that the matter was closed. Opponents of the NBN sought to suggest the case cast a shadow over Mr Quigley’s judgment, but Mr Verwaayen said he had no case to answer.

“I have the greatest respect for him as an individual. I have met him a few times as a customer and I have a high respect for what he is building with NBN," Mr Verwaayen said.

“It is right for the media to pay attention if companies don’t behave but we have paid our price. It is behind us now. If you do something wrong you pay the price for it, you face up to it and you deal with it."

Mr Quigley said he was never called to appear at the ICE hearing, and had moved on from the issue.

“The [ICE] appeal was declined by the US judicial systems and I’m frankly not following it. It’s not something I worry about," Mr Quigley said.

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Alcatel-Lucent has a $1.5 billion deal with NBN Co for the supply of fibre optic gear and Mr Verwaayen said he was expecting further growth for his company in the Asia-Pacific region as demand for video services to smartphones and tablets continued to rise.

Meanwhile on Friday Microsoft was ordered to pay $US70 million to Alcatel-Lucent in a patent infringement case related to its Outlook program.

The dispute, over a tool allowing a user to select a date in Outlook, had originally led to Alcatel being awarded $US358 million, but that was successfully appealed against by Microsoft.